Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AD FRATREM, by JOHN COWPER POWYS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AD FRATREM, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I cannot let this perfect morning pass
Last Line: Her garden slopes, and fruitful orchard vales.
Subject(s): Grief; Morning; Nature; Oaths; Sea; Soul; Sorrow; Sadness; Ocean


I cannot let this perfect morning pass
Without fulfilling, for my own soul's ease,
In howsoever weak a way, a pledge
Made long ago in human gratitude,
Brother, to thee. Ah! what a name is there!
What unpretending brave humanities,
Earth-rooted, nourished by the kindly sun
Of natural joy, purged by the wholesome rain
Of natural grief, breathe from it! When I think
How by the inevitable ministries
Of Nature and the secret march of Fate
We two were drawn together and cast down,
In the same plot to thrive or fail; who else
With such unresting sympathy, such calm
And ceaseless love would have upstayed my steps
So apt to stumble? I perchance may win
Fleeting love-glances from great Nature's eyes
Enough to fire my verse, but thee she takes
On her own lap and fondles night and day;
For where man leaps to strike the oppressor low,
Where little children dance in daisied fields,
Where lovers cling with burning lips and snatch
A lifetime from a moment, where the sea
Wakes in an anguished soul one answering cry,
Where birds or beasts or flowers behold the sun,
Or any human spirit draws to earth
The quietness and patience of the stars,
Dwells Poesy -- and not in laboured rhyme,
Alone, or only in the poet's dreams --
The deep environing air is full of her,
She walks the common fields and builds her nest
Upon the lowly ground.
In blithe and generous mood, my brother, thou
Dost make the earth thy home; her passing clouds,
Her sunless caves thou fear'st not, but dost choose
Rather her sun-illumined flower-strewn fields,
Her garden slopes, and fruitful orchard vales.





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